Desmond and Mpho Tutu suggest in their The Book of Forgiving that the pain/suffering in our lives presents us with a choice either for revenge, or to forgive. Everyone knows that it’s not that simple, that it’s never an either/or in an increasingly both/and world. Yet binaries do offer a clarity of analysis even as they flatten the multiplicities of embodied experience of living in community, interconnection.
As I’ve been wrestling with my own sabbatical writing, Tutus’ work has touched the tenderness within me, a deep grief from the church’s centuries of imposition of shame/abuse upon the Feminine and the overwhelming lack of this feminine within my earliest years. Habitual expression of this has been rage, but the last 3-4 years have beckoned a new approach for living with this grief. Counter-intuitive, liberating, quite different, even irrational…but also a deep manifestation of my own root tradition I somehow recognize.
The weekend offered a microcosm of this new pattern. My husband preached a sermon that nicked the rage. I didn’t hate the sermon, as he suggested to my folks in our weekly Zoom call. I’m sure it was what Spirit invited for him and his congregation’s consumption. But it did trigger the deep sadness-rage in me about the church’s utter unwillingness to look at itself, its language, its traditions for how it damages human beings on the “other sides” of orthodoxy, presumption, perception of morality/righteousness. I spent time writing-processing-ranting at first. Then I breathed into some questions that arrived at a recognizably serendipitous moment (Thank you, Susan), shifting my processing in such a way as to simply name my grief, sadnesses. (More than welcome to dip in, doing so at your own risk, beloved readers. Links provided).
This morning, I sit with awareness of Spirit’s utter precision, “exactness,” in this unfolding for me. (Thanks, Robin, Quanita). The sadness remains palpable, as I suspect I will always carry it with me in this body, this life. But the rage has eased. A sense of hopefulness, even purposefulness, whispers in me today.
The Tutus name a fourfold pattern for forgiving, which begins with telling the story and then naming the hurt. Over this past decade, I finally learned to tell the stories of the church’s abandonment and abuse of women, also of my own yearning for a Feminine that was simply not a part of a German-American if deeply loving family line. This weekend’s writings draw closer to naming the hurt that constantly companions me, without blame or shaming of those I love. Just what my body feels, every day, making it easy to “nick” when I remain in ecclesial streams.
Which seems to be Spirit’s intent for me…so to practice? this most essential of wisdom-human invitations: forgiveness.
(Un)fortunately, I know a new freedom beckons…even if I’m not quite ready for steps 3 or 4. Yet.